The Price
by queentoherswan
Summary: In the aftermath of Neverland Regina and Emma discuss how to handle the price of saving their son. Please read the very first line in bold print if you read nothing else of the A/N as it contains trigger warnings and this story deals very heavily with each of the triggers mentioned.


**Warning: Mentions of rape, abuse, major character death, torture, and abortion**

**A/N: This deals with the general fucked up portions of what could happen in Neverland if OUAT explored the depths of the horrors of life a bit more. That being said if any of the above subjects bother you, please don't read this as it heavily deals with all of them. This is only a one shot so if its completely horrible no one ever has to look at anything remotely like it again, its also very much not my normal style and I'm not sure how I feel about it at all. Anyway everything is under the cut cause it jumps right in to hard subjects from the beginning.**

"There's really only one thing that can be done," Emma said while pacing the floor in front of their bed. "We'll call Dr. Whale in the morning, he'll take care of it."

"No," Regina said, her knees drawn up to her chest, chin resting on the v they made, "no, I can't, Emma," she whispered.

Emma turned to look at her girlfriend, they'd been through hell in the last six months. They'd gone to Neverland to rescue Henry as a party of six expecting to come back a party of seven and had come back a party of four. Snow had been taken by the poison laced into the swords of the lost boys, Hook had fallen to a similar fate though the poison hadn't had time and the wound had claimed his life first, and Rumple had sacrificed himself to save his grandson, trading places with Henry just as Peter Pan's sword had threatened to take the boy's head.

Though each of those deaths weighed heavy in the hearts and minds of the four people who returned it was the lesser of the evils faced in some ways. For while the poison that took Snow's life had been slow acting and very painful it had killed her before the battle where Hook was killed, it killed her before her husband, daughter and grandson's adoptive mother were taken hostage.

Peter Pan was a boy, a teenager, but he was also older than he looked. He was a grown man trapped in a child's body. He was a psychopath that people trusted because he looked like an innocent boy. Hook had been right the day he described Pan as a demon, for that's why the boy, for lack of a better term, had truly been.

The Lost Boys had taken David, Emma and Regina to a different part of the island than where they were keeping Henry. And from the moment they were brought there the three had been forced to play Pan's 'games.' If they lost, well they lost more than just some verbal sparring match. They had all returned battle weary in more ways than one.

David had returned to Storybrooke with an arrow wound to his shoulder, cuts and bruises across his body, a widow and bearing the Pan's bite mark as well as the marks of mermaids on his side. Henry had returned less of a believer than when he left, Pan's mind games having caused him to believe his family wouldn't come and hadn't come for him until his grandfather traded places with him. Emma had gone to Neverland feeling an orphan and she had almost returned a true orphan but Regina had kept that from happening. Regina had gone to Neverland looking for her son and come back a part of a true family but at a cost, the highest cost, a cost that now grew inside her.

The Lost Boys weren't really boys at all, they were men corrupted by magic and power and they weren't looking for a mother as fairytales would have you believe but for a more carnal and primal form of nurture. And they had taken that nurture, as they saw it at least, from Regina. They'd threatened Emma and Regina had stepped into the blonde's place, refusing to let the woman that she had come to care for suffer any more than she already had, than she already was at the hands of Pan and the Lost Boys.

"What if it's his?" Emma questioned as she sank to the end of their bed, tears barely hidden behind her eyes.

Regina closed her own eyes, "Every night," she whispered, "I see them, I see them all as they come for me." She opened her eyes, meeting Emma's gaze, both brown and green eyes filled with tears, "I see them as they torture you, as they torture David. I see as Rumple takes Henry's place, I see Snow's last breath, Hook's last breath. I see all of it Emma, just as you do, just as Henry does, as David does. I want something good to come of it. I want something good from all the pain we each suffered." She reached for Emma's hand, drawing the blonde to the head of the bed and leaning their foreheads together, "This could be that good."

"What if it isn't?"

Regina shook her head, "I can't live on what if's anymore, Emma, I won't. What if's and might have been's are why I cast the curse in the first place, they're why we ended up in Neverland to begin with."

Emma shook her head, unwilling to fight about it anymore, "I'm going for a walk," she muttered, "I'll be back in an hour or so."

Nodding Regina slipped from the bed and walked toward the window that looked out over the backyard as she heard the front door slam below her. Standing in the frame of the window she didn't see the shadow that hid amidst the branches of the tree between the windows of her bedroom and her son's. She didn't see the evil smile that spread across his features. Neverland would rise again, it would rise again with the child of the Evil Queen and its famous master, Peter Pan.


End file.
